Skip to main content

Meet, Youth, Collegiate and National Records - Oda Memorial Meet Highlights



The 55th Oda Memorial Meet went off as scheduled Thursday in Hiroshima with off and on rain leaving a wet track for most of the day. 

In the women's 5000 m, Teresia Muthoni (Daiso) set a meet record 15:06.76 for the win, with runner-up Naomi Muthoni (Univ. Ent.) the only other runner under the Olympic standard at 15:08.07. Japan-based Kenyans took five of the top six positions. Kazuna Kanetomo (Kyocera) won the B-heat in 15:55.24.

Kenyans swept the top three spots in the men's 5000 m A-heat, with local high schooler Cosmas Mwangi (Sera H.S.) taking 1st in 13:22.80. Keita Sato (Rakunan H.S.), who turned 17 in January, was 4th in 13:42.50, the 4th-best time ever by a Japanese high schooler and over 3 seconds under the previous U18 national record. The men's 3000 m also turned out high-level results, with Keisuke Morita (Komori Corp.) leading the top six under 8:00 in a meet record 7:53.01.

Another meet record came in the women's 3000 m steeplechase, with collegiate star Reimi Yoshimura (Daito Bunka Univ.) getting the better of rival Yuno Yamanaka (Ehime Ginko), winner of the 2000 mSC at last week's Hyogo Relay Carnival. Yoshimura ran 9:51.47 to Yamanaka's 9:53.00, both clearing the old  record. 

Yet another new record came in the men's 3000 m steeplechase, where Philemon Kiplagat (Aisan Kogyo), Ryuji Miura (Juntendo Univ.) and 2020 national champ Kosei Yamaguchi (Aisan Kogyo) kicked past Rio Olympian Kazuya Shiojiri (Fujitsu) in the last 200 m to all go under the old meet record. Kiplagat took 1st in a new record of 8:25.13, Miura next in 8:25.31 and Yamaguchi 3rd in 8:26.52. All three came up short of the Olympic standard of 8:22.00, which both Kiplagat and Miura broke last summer outside the qualifying window. 

Outside the distance events, the national records fell in both the women's 100 m hurdles and men's 110 m hurdles. In the women's race, Asuka Terada (Japan Create) bettered her own record in 12.96 (+1.6 m/s) to win the final. Taio Kanai (Mizuno) took the men's final with a new record of 13.16 (+1.7 m/s), runner-up Shunsuke Izumiya (Juntendo Univ.) also bettering his own collegiate national record in 13.33 but coming up 0.01 short fo the Olympic standard.

No records fell in the women's or men's 100 m, the latter the most hyped-up event of the meet. Arisa Kimishima (DK Shiken) won the women's final in 11.64 (+0.9 m/s), with Ryota Yamagata (Seiko) taking the top men's spot in 10.14 (+0.1 m/s) over fellow big guns Yuki Koike (Sumitomo Denko), Yoshihide Kiryu (Nihon Seimei) and Shuhei Tada (Sumitomo Denko).


© 2021 Brett Larner, all rights reserved

Buy Me A Coffee
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most-Read This Week

Waseda Leads Top 7 Teams Under Izumo Ekiden CR, Ivy League Best-Ever 3rd (updated)

3rd last year, Waseda University scored its first Izumo Ekiden win since 2010, taking almost 2 minutes off the CR and leading the top 7 teams under the old record of 2:07:51 for the complete 6-stage, 45.1 km course. Waseda was 16 seconds back in 7th after the First Stage, but its 2nd runner Ojiro Honda made that up easily and put them 6 seconds out front. A massive 22:56 CR for the 8.5 km Third Stage by Shadrack Kipkemei (Nihon Univ.) dropped Waseda back to 2nd even though its runner Ryuki Suzuki broke the old CR too, but back-to-back CR on the next 2 stages by 1st-year Haruki Niizuma and Shunpei Yamaguchi put anchor Shinsaku Kudo out of reach of the rest of the field. Kudo duly won the 10.2 km anchor stage in 29:00, bypassing a 2:06 time entirely for a new 2:05:56 CR, just under 2:48/km average pace for the complete course. Defending champ Koku Gakuin University struggled a bit in the first half of the race but came on strong in the longer second half with 4th and 5th runners...
8 comments
Read more

Kipyegon Repeats, Toyo Wins Hakone Ekiden Qualifier in First Appearance in 21 Years

Back for the first time in 21 years after a disastrous 14th-place finish at the 102nd Hakone Ekiden this past January, Toyo University hit one out of western Tokyo's Showa Kinen Park with a solid win at the Hakone Ekiden Yosenkai, the half marathon that serves as the official qualifying race for the 103rd Hakone Ekiden. The top 10 teams in the Hakone auto-qualify for the following year, with the rest having to run the Yosenkai in October with a squad of 10 to 16 runners out of which the top 10 score on aggregate time, with the 10 fastest schools joining the Hakone field and top individuals from non-qualifying teams names to the Kanto Region Student Alliance select team to make up the complete Hakone field of 21. Driven in large part by an aggressive run from 3rd-year Yu Miyazaki , one of only 2 Japanese athletes to go with the big African contingent up front, Toyo won in 10:31:30, 1:03:09 or 2:59.6/km per athlete. As the first team to have broken the 3:00/km average pace barrie...
1 comment
Read more

Ngetich and Mutiso Take Down Tokyo Legacy Half CR

In its 5th edition the Tokyo Legacy Half Marathon scored 2 new course records via Kenyans from the Ikaika agency, with 10 km WR holder Agnes Ngetich blasting 3 minutes off the old record to win by over 4 in 1:04:23, and Alexander Mutiso skimming just 1 second under the CR for the win by 5 seconds in 59:51. The 2 races played out completely differently, even if the paydays were the same for the winners. Surrounded by an envelope of male runners all the way to the final 100 m, Ngetich was out hard on the downhill in the first 5 km, hitting it on sub-64 pace in 15:08 before leveling out on the flat middle 10 km. Her next 2 splits projected to 1:04:09 and 1:04:17, and even with the uphill back to the stadium in the last 5 km she didn't fall far off from that, winning in 1:04:23. Runner-up Tabitha Njeri Kamau was nearly a mile back in 1:08:28, with Kamau's Mitsui Sumitomo Kaijo teammate Kazuna Kanetomo dropping a 1:10:17 PB for 3rd. Now an independent, track Olympian Kaede Ha...
2 comments
Read more